Updated Dec 21, 2025 • ~8 min read
The stone walls of Kaian’s study seemed to press in on me as I stood before his massive desk. Three hours had passed since he’d shown me the bond records, and my mind still reeled.
“Tell me about the marking ceremony,” Kaian said, his voice deceptively calm. He stood by the window, backlit by moonlight, his crimson eyes fixed on me. “Every detail.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “What’s there to tell? Drake chose my sister.”
“He didn’t choose her.” Kaian turned, moving with that unnatural vampire grace. “You said the bond pulled you here. That means your mate bond was severed—violently. That doesn’t happen naturally.”
My stomach twisted. “What are you saying?”
“Someone interfered.” He crossed to me, stopping just inches away. Close enough that I could feel the cold radiating from his body, could smell cedar and something darker. “Someone broke a bond that was forged three centuries ago. Who knew about Drake? About the ceremony?”
“Everyone in the pack knew. It was—” I swallowed hard. “It was supposed to be me. Drake and I had been courting for two years. The whole pack expected it.”
“Your sister included?”
I thought of Lyla’s smiles in the weeks before the ceremony, how she’d helped me choose my dress, braided my hair. How she’d made me tea the night before.
The night before.
“Oh goddess.” My knees buckled, but Kaian caught me, his hands ice-cold on my arms. “The tea. Lyla made me tea and I—I felt strange the next morning. Weak. Like something was missing but I couldn’t remember what.”
Kaian’s eyes blazed brighter. “She drugged you.”
“No.” But even as I said it, memories flooded back. Lyla’s insistence that I drink it all. How I’d woken with a pounding headache, how the world had felt muted. How when Drake’s mark appeared on Lyla’s neck, I’d felt the bond there but couldn’t quite grasp it, like trying to hold water. “She wouldn’t. We’re twins. We’re—”
“You’re sisters.” Kaian’s voice turned harsh. “And she stole your mate.”
Rage and grief crashed over me in equal measure. I shoved against his chest, needing distance, needing air. He let me go and I stumbled back. “You don’t understand. Lyla and I—we’ve been connected since birth. She’s the only one who ever—” My voice cracked. “She held me when our mother died. She defended me when the pack called me weak. She wouldn’t do this.”
“Then explain the severed bond. Explain why Drake marked her instead of you.”
I couldn’t. The room spun and I pressed my palms to my eyes, trying to think past the roaring in my ears. “Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe the bond was wrong—”
“The bond is never wrong.” Kaian was in front of me again, moving faster than I could track. His hands gripped my shoulders, not quite gentle. “Lira, look at me.”
I did. His crimson eyes burned with an intensity that made my breath catch.
“Your sister poisoned you,” he said, each word deliberate. “She severed your mate bond and stole your rightful place. That’s not love. That’s betrayal.”
“Stop.” Tears streamed down my face. “Please stop.”
But he didn’t. “She watched you suffer. Watched you run. Did she come after you? Did she try to explain?”
She hadn’t. Three weeks had passed and Lyla had sent no word, made no attempt to find me. Even knowing how I’d looked at her that day—like my heart was being carved from my chest—she’d stayed silent.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I whispered.
Kaian’s grip loosened, but he didn’t let go. “I want the truth. About what happened. About what she used to break the bond. Because Lira—” His voice dropped lower. “If she could sever one bond, she could sever another. And I won’t lose you again.”
The raw possession in his voice should have terrified me. Instead, something in my chest sparked to life. Not quite the mate bond, not yet, but something close. Something that recognized him on a level deeper than logic.
“You don’t even know me,” I said.
“I’ve spent three hundred years knowing you.” His thumb brushed my jaw, the touch feather-light despite his obvious tension. “I know you survived what would have broken others. I know you’re strong enough to face the truth, even when it destroys you. And I know—” His eyes searched mine. “I know you feel it too. This pull between us.”
I did. Even through my grief, even through the betrayal that felt like poison in my veins, I felt him. Not the mate bond—that was still buried, still dormant—but something equally undeniable.
“Tell me about the tea,” Kaian said softly. “What did it look like? Smell like?”
I closed my eyes, forcing myself back to that night. “Purple. It smelled like wolfsbane and something sweet. Honey, maybe? And underneath—” I frowned. “Something metallic. Like blood.”
Kaian went very still. “Blood magic.”
“That’s forbidden.” My eyes snapped open. “The pack would never—Elder Edith would have sensed it—”
“Unless your sister is more powerful than anyone realized.” He released me, moving to his desk where he pulled out a leather-bound book. “Moon Wolves are rare. But twins? Twins born under the full moon with matching marks?” He flipped pages, then turned the book toward me.
I stared at the illustration—two wolves, one silver and one black, circling a moon. The text below was in Old Tongue, but I could make out enough words to understand.
Twin bonds. Power sharing. The ability to borrow strength from one another.
“No,” I breathed. “Lyla’s wolf is weak. She can barely shift—”
“Is she?” Kaian’s voice was gentle now, almost pitying. “Or has she been borrowing your strength your entire life?”
The world tilted. I thought of every time Lyla had seemed tired after I’d had a particularly strong training session. How she’d always insisted we sleep near each other, hands touching. How our grandmother had told us to never be parted, that our bond kept us both alive.
What if it was only keeping her alive?
“I need to sit.” My voice didn’t sound like my own.
Kaian guided me to a chair, his hands steady on my arms. He knelt before me, bringing us eye-level. “I know this is difficult—”
“Difficult?” I laughed, the sound brittle. “My sister—my twin—has been draining me for twenty years and then stole my mate. Difficult doesn’t begin to cover it.”
“She’s afraid,” Kaian said. Something in his expression shifted, became almost sympathetic. “Afraid you’ll discover the truth. Afraid you’ll take back what’s yours.”
“I don’t want Drake.” The words came out harder than I intended. “He chose her. Bond or no bond, he marked her neck and stood there while the pack humiliated me.”
“Good.” Kaian’s lips curved into something that might have been approval. “He doesn’t deserve you anyway.”
I should have argued. Should have defended Drake, the wolf I’d loved for two years. But looking into Kaian’s crimson eyes, feeling the strange pull between us, I couldn’t muster the energy.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“Now?” Kaian stood, offering me his hand. “Now you rest. Tomorrow we begin training.”
“Training for what?”
His smile was all teeth and darkness. “Training to take back everything she stole.”
I stared at his outstretched hand. Taking it meant accepting the truth—that Lyla had betrayed me. That the sister I’d loved my entire life had poisoned me, severed my bond, and stolen my future. It meant accepting that the pull I felt toward this vampire might be real, might be the mate bond trying to reform after three centuries of searching.
It meant accepting that everything I’d known was a lie.
I took his hand.
His fingers closed around mine, ice-cold and impossibly strong. He pulled me to my feet, then surprised me by bringing my hand to his lips. The kiss was formal, old-fashioned, but the heat in his eyes was anything but.
“You won’t regret this,” he murmured against my skin.
I already did. But as he led me from the study, as his thumb traced circles on my wrist and something deep in my chest began to wake, I also knew I’d never felt more alive.
Whatever came next—confronting Lyla, understanding this bond, learning what it meant to be tied to a vampire who’d waited three hundred years—I’d face it.
Because Kaian was right about one thing: I was strong enough to handle the truth.
Even if it destroyed me.
Reader Reactions